Google spent millions dissuading game devs from opening app stores on Android, Nintendo included

Nintendo has released a number of games on mobile devices, and they have some helpful apps available as well. Outside of that, Nintendo doesn’t do too much with mobile devices. When it comes to the Android side of things, that might be due to Google’s actions.

According to a new report, Google spent hundreds of millions of dollars convincing big-name game developers to not open their own app stores on Android devices. This information comes from an unredacted copy of Epic’s 2020 lawsuit against Google.

We know for a fact that Google paid Activision Blizzard $360 million over three years for an agreement like this, and that’s just one example of 24 different deals Google made with devs. According to the documents, Nintendo was given a deal as well. This was all part of efforts by Google that they called “Project Hug.”

We’re not too sure Nintendo had any interest in offering an app store on Android devices, but if they even had an inkling, we know who stepped in to squash it!